This blog is a lab notebook for my work with the Reprap open source 3D printing undertaking.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Arrived

The Sherline lathe arrived on Thursday. I was working that night but stayed up extra late and more or less got it assembled. It went together without a lot of drama. The digital readout box makes whether you bought the lathe with American or SI verniers irrelevant since you can select metric or "Imperial" on the digital readout box.

The readout box also includes an optical tachometer to keep track of the rpm rate of the lathe. The DC controller knob will give you stable rotational rates down to about 200-250 rpm.

This morning, I mounted the lathe on a piece of chipboard for stability.

I bought a couple of pieces of aluminum round bar, a piece of stainless round bar and 3 feet of hot rolled steel round bar to practice on. You can see one of the aluminum round bars mounted in the lathe.

2 comments:

Got one! Also got a thread cutting attachment and a bunch of other stuff. :-)

I paid very close attention to that list of accessories you were kind enough to make for me. The only things I haven't got so far are the fast change block and the four independent jaw chuck. Sherline wants something like $250 for the quick change block. I've found another supplier who has one for sherline lathes for $99. I'm not sophisticated enough to judge what I am seeing yet, though. ;-)